Rainbow Six Lockdown

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What happens when a developer can't reach its own lofty goals? You get Lockdown.

By Douglass C. Perry

In its extraordinary Tom Clancy series, Red Storm and Ubisoft have generally made moderate incremental steps to improve each title, sticking with a firm simulation- and realistic style approach. While loading up gamers with a healthy arsenal of powerful weapons and tools and incorporating a unique online growth system for Xbox players, the team's approach to the gameplay in Rainbow Six Lockdown is a mixed effort that feels forced, awkward, and edgeless, while retaining only some of the game's best qualities.

Ubisoft's attempt to broaden or make more arcadey the tightly balanced gameplay is occasionally successful, but oftentimes it feels like a forced marriage of gameplay styles. Unfortunately, this tactic is neither likely to woo gamers on the fence of buying, nor is it likely to appeal to long-time players or hardcore fans.

Sniper Elite? Anyone who's played the Rainbow Six series knows the online game has always been its biggest asset. Getting a four-on-four online session and pouring over map after map in Rainbow Six 3 and Black Arrow proved great fun because the game was based on knowledge of a map, good communicative teamwork, and skill at a particular weapon. There was always a healthy balance that proved skill was king above all else. The game wasn't perfect, but it kept moving in the right direction. The single-player game was the one major aspect requiring the most work. Ubisoft has addressed the single-player game's issues with the desire to make the game more approachable and in more arcade-like in nature, which appears at odds with the game's realistic, sim-like design.

The most obvious addition is the introduction of sniper missions. In the game's dozen missions, players find themselves switching from the team leader Ding Chavez to its designated sniper, Dieter Weber. While as Weber, you'll observe a scenario from afar and use your sniper skills to pick off enemies while your team inserts itself deeper into enemy territory. Arcade games such as Namco's Silent Scope series and even Time Crisis (which isn't even a sniper game) handle these situations with far more aplomb and deftness than Ubisoft has here.

You'll find enemies showing up from all angles with little warning, and RPGs appearing from area you might not see the first, second, or third time you play a mission. The result is that the trial-and-error nature of the levels feels more amateurish and forced than the rest of the game, not quite balancing in with the rest of the gameplay. Enemies are forced to take obvious positions that are too easy to get to, while the back and forth fire-fighting between the Rainbow ground team and the enemy reveals that both sides are extraordinarily horrible shots. It's a great idea, poorly implemented. Only a few of the missions actually work adequately (the mid-game mission in which players take over a boat, sniping from a helicopter is one of the better ones).

New Ways to Fight While the sniper missions are a bit of a bust, Ubisoft has implemented some good new ideas to add breadth to the often repetitive motions of clearing room after room after room. Your team is a little more adept this time around. You can call it to follow, stay, or scout, which lends a better mobility to the team. Your AI unit now usually adapts better to a situation on the fly than before. It's more aggressive when in firefight situations, though the team AI still is in need of more tuning when it comes to setting up to prevent itself from getting hurt. Naturally, your skill comes in handily here, but the team doesn't always set up in small, protected areas, often instead setting up in a formation that leaves itself wide open to attack, even if the place I put them was initially well conceived and protected. In fact, it seems as if the team AI has taken a few steps back on this note.